11 July, 2025

In a world first, the UK government has announced plans to introduce mandatory health food sales reporting for all large food companies as part of its upcoming ten-year Health Plan. The aim? To make the average shopping basket healthier and reduce diet-related ill health. 

Under the plan, food businesses will be required to report annually on the healthiness of their food and drink sales. The government will use the data from the disclosures to set mandatory targets for healthier food sales and businesses will have the flexibility to hit the targets however they like, through tweaking recipes, shuffling shelves or launching new healthy products and incentive programmes.  

Rather than piling more pressure on shoppers, the spotlight is now on the food industry to step up to the plate. And it matters: according to the Food Foundation, 1,000 calories of healthy food currently costs shoppers more than double compared to purchasing the equivalent amount of less healthy foods such as ready meals and processed meats.  

It’s a major win for our friends at Rathbones Greenbank and Nomad Foods, who’ve both been strong advocates for mandatory reporting. Greenbank has worked with ShareAction, the Food Foundation and the Investor Coalition on Food Policy to push for a level playing field and give investors better insight into health-related business risks. Meanwhile, Nomad has been voluntarily reporting the proportion of its healthy product sales since 2017. CEO Stéfan Descheemaeker has also been vocal in calling for mandatory traffic light labelling on packaged foods and annual reporting of healthy vs unhealthy sales (for more, see our previous Friday 5). 

With the right ingredients – investor pressure, government policy, and food industry buy-in – this could be the recipe for real change. Watch this space. 

  

By Charlotte Pounder